SBIR-STTR Award

As producers of one of the US Department of Education's eight substance abuse prevention videos distributed to every school district in the nation, we combine our expertise with that of prevention and evaluation experts boom Yale University Psychology Department and the Connecticut Department of Education to assess a user-friendly, video-based training program and evaluation master forms which any educator could use to evaluate substance abuse prevention videos. The evaluation package Frill be designed to assess video programs according to establish, current criteria of effectiveness and to realistically address the needs and limitations imposed upon educators conducting school based prevention programs. The R&D process will help establish objective national norms for creating and evaluating the effectiveness of substance abuse prevention videos; and it will Am educators with guidelines for implementing prevention curricula that comply with Federal and state regulations upon which their program funding depends. Phase I also includes an elemental model for involving students in schools' evaluation teams.Key Words: Drug Abuse Prevention, Evaluation Methodologies, Video (Educational)

Anticipated Results:
We will develop and test a prototype of the evaluation package he Phase I, and will test it with a large national sample of educat0 m Dam It using the eight US ED-funded prevention videos as test cases We will subject our Phase II test data to both Multidimensional Scaling of fact0 determine effectiveness and Multi-Variate statistical analysis of differential rot to the video programs; and the conclusions will provide a valuable database of national norms for an those who make and use videos for substance abuse prevention-Federal and state agencies, local educators, video producers, community-based groups, and treatment facilities. The final product of the R&D will be a low coast, extensively tested package- consisting of a video-based training component and user-friendly evaluation master forms-which can be marketed to either school districts or to an intermediary Federal agency, such as the Department of Education national dissemination.Topic 5: Development of a Mechanism, Device or Model for Evaluating the Effectiveness of Drug Prevention Videotapes

Although videos are an integral component of many of the substance abuse prevention curricula mandated in school districts across the USA, edu- W cators do not have a have a reliable, nationally tested, readily available instrument for evaluating the videos they depend upon to foster Drug Pree Schools. As producers of one of the U.S. Department of Education's eight substance abuse prevention videos dis-tributed to every school district in the nation, we will combine our expertise with that of prevention and evaluation experts from Yale University Psychology Department and the Connecticut Department of Education to create a user-friendly, video-based training program and evaluation instruments which educators could use to evaluate any substance abuse prevention video. The evaluation package is designed to assess videos according to established, current cAteria of effectiveness, such as potential for affecting students' skills, attitudes and behaviors, developmental and cultural appropriateness, and classroom implementation considerations. The prototype instrument also includes an experimental model for involving students in the evaluation process. The instrument will be refined and tested nationally, and the testing results will help to establish objec-tive national norms for effectiveness for those who create, use, and evaluate substance abuse prevention videos for school-based prevention education.

Keywords:
Drug Abuse Prevention, Evaluation, Video (Educational)Summary: The prototype evaluation package we developed in Phase I will be refined and tested with a national sample of educators in Phase II, using the eight US ED-funded prevention videos as test cases. We will subject Phase II test data to both multidimensional scaling of factors determining "effectiveness" and multi-variate statistical analysis of differential respon-sivity to the video programs; and the conclusions will provide a valuable database of national norms for all those who make and use videos for substance abuse prevention ÑFederal and state agencies, local educators, video producers, community groups, and treatment facilities. The final product will be a low-cost, user-friendly, empirically tested, reliable evaluation instrument, consisting of a video-based training component and evaluation master formsÑwhich can be marketed either directly to school districts by our own distribution company, Instructional Media Institute, or to an intermediary Federal agency, such as the Department of Education, for subsequent dissemination.Topic 5: Development of a Mechanism, Device or Model for Evaluating the Effectiveness of Drug Prevention Videotape